I think they are doing a very poor job of illustrating the passing of time, or at least of maintaining consistency when it comes to the amount of time it takes to travel between locations. Not only does Euron teleport around with his giant stealth fleet, but Jaimie going to Highgarden, the Unsullied sailing for Casterly Rock, Jon going to Dragonstone...has anyone looked at a map recently?

I think they have accelerated the plot so much that there simply isn't a way to show this without putting subtitles on the screen to depict the passage of time. I'm also wondering how a single wagon, loaded down with gold, could make it to King's Landing that far ahead of the rest of the army. I guess the same way Jaime could swim that far in full plate armor.

The magnificent seven gathering for the wight hunt was pretty amusing. I just have the feeling from the previews that they are going to end up meeting the bulk of the army of the dead and Dany will have to come save them. (since she's got the hots for Jon now). Something tells me that the Night's King will end up with a zombie dragon, just because the writers seem to thrive on making things symmetrical.

Finally, Littlefinger's endgame....in the books (and I don't think this is really a spoiler) he is trying to basically get himself closer and closer to the Iron Throne by scheming, marrying, and betraying. I think his plan was to marry off Sansa to a character in line for the throne (I think his name was Harry the Heir) and probably eventually marry Sansa himself as a proxy for his unresolved lovelust for Catlyn Stark. In the show, he seems to have his sights a little smaller, manipulating things to Sansa is the "Queen of the North" and maybe after isolating her from her family, he marries her, becoming King of the North as well as the regent or whatever of the Vale. That's a lot of power right there. I don't know whether it puts him line for the Iron Throne, but the politics of the show are so different from the books, I'm not sure that's even possible at this point.

Regarding the gold getting to Kings Landing before the rest of the convoy, the simple explanation is that they sent the gold ahead of them while they were harassing the farms for their crops. So while the Tarlys and the gang were basically robbing the farmers of the their food, the gold was enroute to the capital.

I think they are doing a very poor job of illustrating the passing of time, or at least of maintaining consistency when it comes to the amount of time it takes to travel between locations. Not only does Euron teleport around with his giant stealth fleet, but Jaimie going to Highgarden, the Unsullied sailing for Casterly Rock, Jon going to Dragonstone...has anyone looked at a map recently?

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Oh, I think there's a deliberate attempt there to sacrifice clarity/consistency in order to keep up pacing. And I don't think that's a bad thing. There's a lot of story to get to, and we don't need to see the characters traveling for three episodes like it was in the previous seasons.

Count me in as another one who isn't bothered if we don't have to sit through every road bump along a long journey just to get to the next pivotal scene. I can grasp that time's moved on somewhat without it having to be literally spelled out for me.

I'm glad they're cutting the travel time. The faster pace agrees with me. If this were a ten episode season, Sam would have two or three episodes left at the Citadel scraping shit. Bleh. I bet it drives Martin crazy how much they're leaving out, though.

Tyrion and Varys were concerned about Dany torching Tarly and Dickon, but was it really so bad? Word will get around Westeros that the Breaker of Chains only sets intransigent lords on fire and lets the little people go. That helps her cause I would think. From an elitist point of view she's terrifying, though; I don't think the Imp nor the Spider realized how much revolution they've actually signed on for.

I've of two minds when Dany had the dragon torch them, David: On the one hand, it was a sign to the gathered troops of how fearless she is, and may have saved lives. (ie, the troops witnessing bending their knees after seeing them roasted). But on the one hand, it was also a somewhat evil act, and converting the soldiers through fear is a bad thing.

I hope something bad happens to the Citadel. Those maesters are wise fools. Men who think they know everything, yet know nothing.

My argument isn't that they need to show the travelling, it's that events are occurring simultaneously that should not be able to due to their markedly different geographical extremes. It's okay to compress time, but a one week journey shouldn't be evened out with a two week one so the events happen at the same time.

My argument isn't that they need to show the travelling, it's that events are occurring simultaneously that should not be able to due to their markedly different geographical extremes. It's okay to compress time, but a one week journey shouldn't be evened out with a two week one so the events happen at the same time.

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It's always been the case on this show that just because scenes appear sequentially in an episode, it doesn't mean they are occurring concurrently or even within the same timeframe. Obviously in this episode there are scenes that have to occur after other ones because they refer to them, but the chronology of when things were happening in different parts of Westeros has always been deliberately obscured.

On the whole, the series does not have a consistent pace. Some previous seasons plodded along at a snails pace with way to much respect for the passage of time. Now that there are fewer locations and people to concern ourselves with the pace and storytelling is much more accelerated by comparison. I think we will get the slow paced and slightly different unfolding of events in the books when they come out...in 2060. =)

I've of two minds when Dany had the dragon torch them, David: On the one hand, it was a sign to the gathered troops of how fearless she is, and may have saved lives. (ie, the troops witnessing bending their knees after seeing them roasted). But on the one hand, it was also a somewhat evil act, and converting the soldiers through fear is a bad thing.

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Personally overseeing the living cremation of even a single enemy raises an enormous red flag for a leader, that's for sure, but what the hell, it's Westeros. By their standards its arguably ̶ arguably ̶ more enlightened than dispossessing however many soldiers and bannermen along with them.

I keep waiting for Jon to make the point to Dany that Stannis made, that he had to earn the kingship by fighting the real enemy to the North. I bet that would convince her.

I can't believe there are 8 episodes to go. There's so much ground to cover. Two dragons don't even have riders yet! I think I can safely be peremptorily disappointed by the Night King. He's being played by a stunt man, which doesn't suggest we're going to see much more depth unless they recast with Christopher Eccleston or somebody for the final season.

The time jump for travel doesn't bother me either. As Michael said, it's happened throughout the series. It may not have been noticed as much because GoT did show us the slog to get from one place to another quite often, but other times the producers subtly jumped time to get an army into place that realistically couldn't have gotten there otherwise. Doesn't bother me in the slightest. I don't keep track of such things. Window dressing and minutia.

I gotta say, while I enjoyed the episode, I found it stretching suspension of disbelief that seven, or so, men were holding off literally hundreds (thousands?) of wights. The numbers just were too overwhelming.

The army of the dead seemed really concerned about freeing the "wight" from Jon and co., but I'm wondering if bringing a wight south of the wall will destroy the magic that allows the wall to function.

Notwithstanding the cool events of the episode, I couldn't help but think - how damned lucky does Jon Snow have to BE?!? It reminded me of the punchline of a joke (paraphrased...)

"Why didn't I, the Lord of Light, answer? I sent you a dragon, I helped you get out of a frozen lake, and I sent your uncle!"

Honestly, TWO miracle rescues, a radical change of relationship with "Dany" (and yes, I caught "My brother was the last to call me that."), and the armies of the north haven't revolted or deserted on his sister Sansa - this has to be the luckiest guy on the planet!

Last night's episode was lots of fun, but they played fast and loose with the passage of time. Presumably, it took 24 hours-ish, to run back to the Wall, send a raven to Dragonstone from the Wall, and fly up north to save the kidnappers butts. They also managed to stumble upon a group of wights that were all "turned" by their leader with the exception of one. How convenient. Despite all of the problems I had with the pace of the story telling, it was still damned cool and mildly frightening that I had a story element confirmed. Looking forward to the final episode of this season.

When all the wights but the one they needed dropped re-dead, the Hound should have turned to the camera and said, "That was very fucking convenient!"

It didn't quite register with me at first that a half dozen red shirts accompanied the party. Every time somebody got mulched by zombies I kept rewinding to figure out which of the 7 bit it. But they never did!

I find myself wondering how much of this episode will be in the eventual books, should they happen. The Night's Watch already tried the plan by sending Tyrion a zombie hand in A Clash of Kings (I think) but it rotted and he took pleasure in humiliating the messenger. And I feel like Cersei crowning herself won't be in the books. Maybe the dragon will die?

Sophie Turner has said that Sansa would be pretty unlikeable this season, but I don't agree so far. I'm really hoping she turns the tables of Littlefinger next ep but overall I think her conflicting impulses this season have been interesting to watch.

Good episode mildly marred by the fact that the main event was telegraphed all season so there wasn't really a true OMG moment. (Nice of the cannon fodder to show up between episodes like that.) There were two potential casualties who I didn't want to see go that made it through, so that was nice anyway.

Tyrion's losing streak continues when it comes to the advice, more's the pity.

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